Representatively Docile Reporting from the Atlantic Wire — Regarding the Death of Reporter Michael Hastings — Exemplifies, in Reverse, How Dependent We Are on a Skeptical Press and a Reasonably Trustworthy Government
© 2013 Peter Free
21 August 2013
“If you say so, Master”
American journalism these days is more often a voice of Government Establishment than the Fourth Estate that freedom lovers need it to be.
Below is a minor example of how the American media’s docile mindset seems to work — jumping to non-inquisitive conclusions, simply because it is easier to do that than it is to investigate.
The below example comes from yesterday’s Atlantic Wire.
I pick on it, not to point fingers at the Atlantic Wire, but to use the article as a representative sample of the pablum that American media typically spew:
The death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings — which had been subject to irresponsible speculation and even conspiracy theories — was officially ruled an accident by the Los Angeles coroner's office on Tuesday.
Hastings died of "traumatic injuries," though he had reportedly fallen back into drug use in the month before his death, with meth and marijuana found in his system.
The 33-year-old Hastings died during a single car accident in Los Angeles on the morning of June 18. Hastings was driving a Mercedes when it he lost control of the vehicle, causing it to collide with a tree planted in a median. The car subsequently caught fire; firefighters spent half and hour extracting Hastings's charred body from the fiery wreck, according to the rather gruesome coroner's report.
The report should put to rest notions that Hastings's death was some sort of government conspiracy.
© 2013 Connor Simpson, Michael Hastings Had Relapsed Before Fatal Accident, The Atlantic Wire (20 August 2013) (paragraph split)
What did reporter Connor Simpson read, which put a rest to “irresponsible speculation and even conspiracy theories”?
A routinely investigated accident and coroner’s report, whose principals apparently (and understandably) presumed that they had no reason to dig deeper.
What stands out in reading the report’s 17 pages is that no one was contextually suspicious of anything.
Documentation of the family’s statements regarding Michael Hasting’s relapse in drug-taking ways is made in almost casual passing. But with just enough emphasis to hang the accident hypothesis on a seemingly persuasive hook.
In short, although Mr. Hastings had allegedly relapsed back into drug use — with a hint of bipolar illness thrown in — he had too low levels of drugs in his system to legitimately account for recklessly driving at excessive speeds and killing himself thereby. Apparently, in Los Angeles County, you can come to your demise in a fiery and spectacular crash, and the presumption will be that defects in your character were enough to cause it.
That, of course, is not an experientially unreasonable assumption. But in Hasting’s context, it might have been too quick a one.
As an ex-cop, I understand the wish to keeps things investigatively simple. But, given Mr. Hastings’ apparently numerous enemies and his fear that the FBI was recently after him, one tends to think that the Los Angeles County investigation may have been a bit too cursory to be completely persuasive.
My objection to journalist Simpson’s unquestioning attitude
After accusing conspiracy theorists of being “irresponsible”, Connor Simpson swallowed the accident report wholesale — without scrutinizing it closely enough to recognize that it has so many holes that a Special Operations unit could have waltzed through it, uncamouflaged.
Caveat — regarding my intent
I do not imply that Mr. Hastings was murdered. Nor do I accuse those, whom he probably irritated, of plausibly having become villains.
But I do suggest — given the unsuspecting coroner’s investigation and press representative Connor Simpson’s unquestioning acceptance of it — that Mr. Hastings could have been the victim of a perfect execution.
And that has worrisome institutional import for much of what goes in American society today.
A docile press, and a Federal Government that clearly lacks integrity, have combined to eliminate the checks and balances that theoretically once made the American State less vulnerable to citizen oppression than it is today.
“If ya ain’t watching, you don’t have a clue”
With a docile, unskeptical, and uninsightful press — and a secrecy-oriented and often autocratic government — Americans are completely at the mercy of whatever powerful people want to do behind their backs.
The moral? — When we are not sufficiently curious, suspicious, or authority-challenging — people can disappear, with barely a ripple in their wake
That is why a courageous and diligently inquisitive press is essential to freedom and governmental integrity.